We'd been at this for almost four days now. The last town we'd gone through had been Walthourville, Georgia, sometime yesterday evening. It had been like a ghost town. We'd only seen a few people, and everything seemed run down. Clearly the city had been hit hard by the depression. In just a few years, it seemed like the small town had lost the community spirit it seemed to have at one point.
We were trudging trough no man's land, somewhere in between towns. After stopping just outside of Walthourville last night, we'd decided to get an early start this morning. It was almost noon now, and with the sun bearing down on us, I was beginning to dehydrate again. We'd bottled a lot of purified water after we left the creek in Richmond Hill, and we still had some left, but it would probably only last another night or so.
It was difficult to keep ourselves from getting bored when we were just walking through woods and down backroads every day, but we'd come up with a few activities for entertainment purposes. We'd race every now and then, or we'd try to see who could spot a bird first since we were all expert identifiers. Most of the time it was just 'who can spot a red bird' or something along those lines. Stupid games like that. Okay, I guess they weren't that stupid. They kept us from getting bored out of our minds, especially me.
"You guys want anything?" Eli called. He was in the front while Luke was bringing up the rear. The rest of us were stuffed in between somewhere. It wasn't exactly a single file line, but it was close to it. I was just in front of Luke, with Peyton in front of me and Marcus up with Eli. It was kind of funny seeing the two of them so close to each other. Marcus towered over him by almost six inches.
"Anything what?" I asked.
"Like, lunch or something. I don't know." He stopped for a second and turned to face us. "It's nearly noon." We'd reorganized our supplies into the different backpacks and switched around who carried what. Eli had the first food pack at the moment, while I carried the second, smaller one.
"I have stuff too if anyone wants it," I offered. "I'm not really hungry, personally."
"Shouldn't we save it for supper or something? We had breakfast this morning. Unless anyone is dying of hunger, I think we're good," Luke said sarcastically.
"Maybe I am dying of hunger," Marcus said. "I'll take something out of your backpack Aaliyah." I chuckled, turning around so that he could unzip it and he took out one of the granola bars.
"Don't die," Peyton joked. "I don't know what we'd do without the tall guy with all the muscle."
"Oh, now you're insulting me." Marcus crossed his arms over his chest, pretending to be offended.
"I thought I was the one with all the muscle," Luke said, elbowing him.
"You're both wrong. I am," Eli added, pushing them both aside. It was neat how he'd just shown up randomly, and he fit in so well. I didn't know what we'd be doing if we hadn't found him. Peyton would probably still be leading and asking me for help reading maps. Of course, she would be a little less distracted. I was slightly, well, okay, majorly bothered that she'd taken to Eli so quickly.
Gosh Aaliyah, she's straight. And you're not looking for a girlfriend. You're not even supposed to feel like that, I thought shamefully. But then again, isn't that why we were out here? As Peyton had stated the other night, it was a free country and we were free to love whoever we wanted to. Well, it was supposed to be a free country. And what if the person you loved didn't feel the same about you? Then it didn't matter if it was a free country or not.
"I'm stronger than you Marcus and you know it," Peyton teased.
"Okay, just because you can beat me in an arm wrestle does not mean you're stronger."
YOU ARE READING
Runaways- Runaways 1
Novela Juvenil"Hey, who are you?" I could tell he wasn't trying to scare him off while still trying to establish the fact that we could hurt him if we wanted to. "I was gonna ask you the same question," he replied. "But since to beat me to it, I'm Eli. I'm just a...
